A smashed window at the Louvre is art!

What is art? A proper answer requires out-of-the-frame thinking. Last Sunday, the Louvre in Paris was graced with a performance piece so bold, so kinetic, so meta, that it put the likes of conceptual artist-performer Marina Abramovic in the shade: theft of Napoleon's crown jewels. It was not just a crime; it was a Banksy-style commentary. On ownership, legacy, how nothing says 'imperial hubris' like diamonds in a hat. The gang of balaclava'd aesthetes also left a dazzling installation artwork: a smashed window through which they had come in. Reopened on Wednesday, Louvre now has visitors lining up to gawk, chin in hand, at this new jagged, crystalline homage to Marcel Duchamp's 'The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even,' a.k.a. 'The Large Glass', the French American artist's 1915-23 masterpiece that he created with two panes of glass with materials like lead foil, fuse wire and dust.

But back to the Louvre pane, museum curators should lean in. Instal velvet ropes around the shattered 'canvas' and title it 'Eroica' ('heroic', in Italian), after the name Beethoven gave to his 3rd Symphony in a fit of rage after Napoleon, to whom he had originally dedicated the piece of music, declared himself emperor. And sell commemorative bricks in the gift shop. Nothing says 'postmodern' like a museum robbed of its past. Bravo, burglars, bravo.